“Y’u may now—if y’u promise to take me away—at once. This place has got on my nerves. I couldn’t sleep heah with that Isbel hidin’ around. Could y’u?”
“Wal, I reckon I’d not sleep very deep.”
“Then let us go.”
He shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his piercing gaze studied her distrustfully. Yet all the while there was manifest in his strung frame an almost irrepressible violence, held in abeyance to his will.
“That aboot your bein’ so good?” he inquired, with a return of the mocking drawl.
“Never mind what’s past,” she flashed, with passion dark as his. “I’ve made my offer.”
“Shore there’s a lie aboot y’u somewhere,” he muttered, thickly.
“Man, could I do more?” she demanded, in scorn.
“No. But it’s a lie,” he returned. “Y’u’ll get me to take y’u away an’ then fool me—run off—God knows what. Women are all liars.”
Manifestly he could not believe in her strange transformation. Memory of her wild and passionate denunciation of him and his kind must have seared even his calloused soul. But the ruthless nature of him had not weakened nor softened in the least as to his intentions. This weather-vane veering of hers bewildered him, obsessed him with its possibilities. He had the look of a man who was divided between love of her and hate, whose love demanded a return, but whose hate required a proof of her abasement. Not proof of surrender, but proof of her shame! The ignominy of him thirsted for its like. He could grind her beauty under his heel, but he could not soften to this feminine inscrutableness.